It has been a few days since I have visited the blogosphere, but that does not mean I have been sitting on my laurels doing nothing.  We are heavily into "The Season" now and I have been out seeing orcas on a daily basis.  Yesterday it was the afternoon trip on the M/V Kittiwake and then the sunset trip on the M/V Sea Lion.  Today it was the M/V Sea Lion again, this time with Casey and Capt. Mike.  Each day has been a different experience and a lovely time on the water.  When the...

It was an awesome day in the San Juan Islands today and we had a superb trip.  The orcas disappeared into the oceanic netherworld some time in the night, so we went off in search of bigger and better intrigues.  After motoring down San Juan Channel, around Goose and Long Islands and Whale Rocks, Capt. Mike took Casey, the guests and me on a whirlwind tour around San Juan Island.  We saw porpoises, eagles and sea birds.  There were beautiful islands, homes and waterways for us to...

NOAA Confirms Presence of Subsea Oil Plumes in Gulf By:  Lea Winerman The federal government confirmed Tuesday that subsea clouds of dispersed oil have been found at least 40 miles from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The finding, which confirms what some independent scientists first reported last month, has renewed concerns over the effects of the oil spill on deep-sea life. "NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface...

It was a chore to find them, but I finally got to spend some time with J pod.  This season is starting out slowly and the orcas are still not back in the area full-time like we are used to.  That means that we spend a lot of time searching and seeing other wildlife on the way.  Today though we knew where the animals had been spotted, but once we got there it became clear why the reports had seemed so sporadic.  J pod was scattered in ones and twos over several miles with whale...

It must be since Capt. Hook just arrived!  That is right, we spent the day with good old Capt. Hook and, in this story, his jolly gals.  And we did not have to go more than twenty minutes down San Juan Channel before we met up with them.  Transient orcas T40, or Capt. Hook as he is affectionately known, and two females were traveling north up through Griffin Bay on the east side of San Juan Island today.  It was a quick trip from the dock for us and the rest of the whale watch fleet...

Okay, well it was actually all of us on the M/V Sea Lion that were doing the rocking and rolling, but I am sure that the orcas were having some fun too.  Especially if all of the breaches by the calf were any indication of their state of mind.  The waters were rough, (unusual for the San Juan Islands), but our guests were tougher and we prevailed in the end.  The orcas were spread all along the south end of San Juan Island in little clusters that were hard to find until we stumbled...

It was whales again today, but this time it was two humpbacks along the west side of San Juan Island.  That makes three different whale species in two days spotted here in the San Juan Islands!  Wow, what a cool place.  It is exceptionally cool when you think about the fact that humpbacks are rare here around the islands.  Normally, if they come into the Salish Sea they do not make it past Victoria Harbor.  Today was our day though and we took advantage of it.  And, as if seeing the...

#53 - Photo courtesy of Cascadia Research Collective

Today we followed whales across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.   A vague report of a whale south of San Juan Island became a gray whale known as #53 (see photo above).  On our way towards the area where he was said to be, one of our guests spotted something else in the water.  I quickly left the bridge to sit on the bow and see if I could help find anything.  Sure enough, up popped a juvenile minke whale a few hundred yards from us. ...

What do you do when there are no reports of whales?  Which way do you go so that you are in the best position in case whales are spotted?  How do you predict where whales are going to be?  The answers are - wildlife tour, any way you want and you don't.  The hardest part about being a Marine Naturalist when there are no whales, is convincing people that no one else is seeing whales either and that when it comes to our orca whales, it is impossible to predict when and where they will...

Hopefully.  Thinking positively, then the orcas are back and they look great!  We spent the trip yesterday afternoon with numerous members of L pod over in the Canadian Gulf Islands.  The first reports came in early in the morning with the orcas being well outside of our northern range.  They covered an incredible amount of water in a short time though and when we left the dock they were slaloming through Active Pass between Galiano and Mayne islands.  Capt. Mike did not waste any...